Secret Boat Strike Memo Justifies Kills by Claiming Targeting Drugs, Not People
theintercept.comSeems like we're bombing a bunch of low level, poverty stricken fisherman who occasionally bring a load of drugs from point A to point B.
I'm sure the complete lack of effectiveness will be worth the condemnation and lost intelligence by our allies, and further erosion of our separation of powers.
Not saying this is called for or legal or anything of the sort, but you can find pictures of some of the boats being destroyed. These aren't fishing boats:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd9k2w8ell0o
https://abcnews.go.com/International/4-killed-latest-us-stri...
Again, I don't support these actions, just pointing out that at least some of these boats are very obviously being used for one thing and one thing only.
> very obviously being used for one thing and one thing only
Can you explain this? I agree they are not fishing boats but I don't understand how anything beyond that is obvious. Is smuggling the only possible use for that boat? Are drugs the only thing that can be smuggled?
Great, then track them to their destination and make arrests. I can't conceive of any capital crime they've committed, can you? Plus, then there's a chance to disrupt someone other than the lowest-level operators.
> track them to their destination and make arrests
so we gonna invade countries, US military boots on the ground at ports where the destination might be? :)
If these drugs aren't coming into the United States then what in the fuck are we even doing? Murdering people just to create minor disruptions in foreign supply chains?
we are trying to overthrow the government of course :)
> “These aren't fishing boats…these boats are very obviously being used for one thing and one thing only.”
It looks like a deep sea panga boat used for fishing. I’m not a sailor so it’s not obvious to me why the destroyed boat pictured is a …well… for one thing only.
Here’s a video of YouTuber ItchyBoots taking a boat around the Darien Gap. [1] What does this look like? (start from “Entrada” sign on the beach).
If the destroyed boat is different, it’s because it has three outboard motors and not just one. Still has the same open design.
I mean, it’s not a “cigar boat” [2].
Adding two more outboards seems same to me as my neighbor who drives a Dodge 3500.
[1]: Starts at 16:00 https://youtu.be/2wjLdLbpzxY
> Seems like we're bombing a bunch of low level, poverty stricken fisherman
There is some precedent: https://www.reuters.com/article/world/cia-faulted-in-shootin...
Heh, I thought you were going to link to this: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/6/us-navy-seals-killed...
Reading a GWOT era CIA book and.. you'll never guess where some of the guys responsible for this shootdown ended up next..
And the bombs are relatively expensive, when bullets are cheap. Even if you don't mind eroding the rights of drug traffickers, it's a wasteful way to do the enforcement action.
The great tragedy is that bullets are also more accurate.
I don't mean to be "that guy", but how do we even know the sailors on these boats aren't just some fishermen working for the cartels because they have a guy at his shack with a gun on his mother and siblings or kids? Or, even worse, what if they aren't working for cartels at all? Just went out to try to fish.
I'm not sure what our endgame is here, but just eyeballing this from the outside it looks like we're doing surgery with chainsaws instead of scalpels.
And all that assumes that our government is actually trying to help. Our end goal could be something else entirely? It's all just mystifying right now? I'm not sure anyone could give a coherent explanation of the why's, and I'm just about certain that no one could give a rational explanation of the how.
Sure, unambiguously the actual drug mules are suckers in some way. They’re still mules.
I feel like we could do better, quite easily. People are very gung-ho (jing-go?) on this and it seems clear to me that we can use our significant technological advantages and investigatory prowess to target these bad actors just like any other day at the office.
This is quite the departure and it is quite troubling to me. The ESA launch site is down there iirc, seems like we have natural allies who would join a push, but instead we sent a carrier group.
At least one of the "why"s is very simple. Trump likes to act in ways which make him look powerful, and which make others respect and fear him.
I think another "why" is ratcheting up the pressure on Venezuela, because Trump has decided or been persuaded to embark on a program of regime change for Venezuela.
I don't actually understand why regime change in Venezuela is important to Trump & MAGA though.
Isn't the historical answer to why regime change usually Oil
> Isn't the historical answer to why regime change usually Oil
Its usually corporate/capital interests; oil has been popular for a while, but, its hardly exclusive. We didn’t get the name “banana republic” from US interventions over oil, after all.
Oil Cartel wants to control Venezuelan oil.
> respect and fear him
I actually don't think Trump understands the difference between those.
I disagree because for soldiers to get close enough to the boat for bullets to be effective risks the lives of the soldiers.
How do you figure?
If I'm considering becoming a drug runner, and I hear "sometimes they arrest you" I'd say "so what?" If I hear "sometimes you get shot at", I'd take my chances and shoot back. But if I keep hearing about missiles obliterating drug runners with no warning... maybe I just stay home.
Decades of the War on Drugs would seem to disagree with your interpretation. Escalating deterrents doesn't work.
It's almost as though wars on things (drugs; terrorism; "woke"; Mickey Mouse; drag-queen story hour) don't stop the titular objects of angst. Curious!
> If I hear "sometimes you get shot at", I'd take my chances and shoot back. But if I keep hearing about missiles obliterating drug runners with no warning... maybe I just stay home.
Given some of the things competing cartels do to each other, getting instantaneously killed by a bomb is probably a relief compared to what some of your 'competitors' may do.
> compared to what some of your 'competitors' may do.
Or your boss. Once you're working for a drug cartel, I don't think you have a whole lot of autonomy when it comes to determining your specific role. If your boss tells you to get in a fishing boat and you refuse, you risk getting killed on the spot.
Drug cartels don't necessarily work like tech companies, where you consider the job postings, apply, sign a contract, and then do the job. It might even be that they need a drug runner and just say "do it or we kill your family".
Again, I'm just suggesting that maybe cartels make fishermen the proverbial "offer they can't refuse".
I'm just wondering if it would be more effective, and far less expensive, to target the subjects making these offers?
All evidence suggests that harsh enforcement can not, does not and will not stop the drug trade from thriving.
Maybe we should try the same thing with people running red lights.
You’re right. I’m sure the drug runner recruitment ad response rate has plummeted /s.
People don’t choose to be drug runners…
> from point A to point B.
Plus neither point is anywhere close to US territory and alleged drug markets, because the little boats the administration has been bombing can't race their way across 1000+ (terrestrial) miles from Aruba to Florida.
OK, Puerto Rico is a bit closer, but yknowwhatimean.
I don't think this Administration/Executive Branch recognizes Puerto Rico (populace) to be American or part of the U.S. except only in as much as it can do whatever it wants there.
> “Fishing doesn’t pay enough to buy a motor like that,” said fisherman Junior González[1]
[1] https://apnews.com/article/1061debe2f983ef7bc9666d3f002b3a0
Maybe so, but the administration claims that these people are not just drug smugglers, but narco-terrorists.
Normally, suspected drug smugglers should be interdicted, boarded, and inspected. The Coast Guard and U.S. Navy train for this. It's standard operating procedure.
It's not normal to destroy boats which don't pose any immediate threat. It would be acceptable to fire on a boat which refuses to permit boarding and inspection, assuming the interdiction itself is legal under maritime law.
Unless there is an imminent threat, you've got to give people a course of action which they can take to avoid their vessel being fired upon: turn back, change course, submit to boarding and inspection, etc.
> Normally, suspected drug smugglers should be interdicted, boarded, and inspected.
Wouldn't any smuggler have drugs in a case weighted by stones ready to dump the second they think they're being interdicted? You wouldn't find anything and possible smugglers would have both liberty and equipment try again.
I suspect there's no easier deterence without boots on ground regime change (ie. Police yourself + develop the region economically) other than essentially shooting at suspiciously behaving craft. I also suspect all the various solutions have been game theorized to death in millitary thinktanks and war colleges and have been known for decades - they just decided to bite the bullet now.
Piracy on the east coast of Africa was a huge problem problem until countries sent navies to shoot the boats out of water if they were behaving suspiciously. I believe some countries were ready to bomb ports towns but it thankfully it didn't get that far before local strongmen got the message.
If they are indeed accused of being narco-terrorists, then they are enemy combatants, and there are no such requirements in either international or US law.
I accuse you of being a narcoterrorist. Hellfire incoming. Goodbye.
That's how war works. Narcoterrorists are no different.
Narcoterrorism isn’t a real thing in this context. Repurposing the term “terrorism” to refer to people who aren’t seeking to enact political aims by doing violence against civilians is ridiculous.
Im not actually in support of killing these people but I have to say, people seem to gloss over that each boatload of these drugs literally destroys multiple American families. People who have lost someone (either through death or just throwing their life away) to drugs will tell you these "poor fishermen" are murderers, who in no way extend the kind of empathy to us that we're expected to show them.
It does get very complicated when you consider they're probably under a lot of "carrot AND stick" from the cartels... but the damage they do is real.
Having lost a fried to drugs, I hear your pain.
I don't see how killing a lot of fishermen and destroying their families alleviates this pain.
There might have been drugs on the boats, but maybe not. No one bothered to check first.
The fishermen might have been part-time drug smugglers, maybe not. How do we know? What investigation was done?
And if we really believe that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"
then taking away people's lives without due process is murder. Cold blooded, premeditated murder. That's a worse crime than selling someone a drug that might kill them.
Friend, don't let your pain blind you to causing more pain. Ethics is hard.
Try not paying these fishermen and see how quickly their empathy runs out.
I mean it is noble to act like you are some being of infinite sympathy and forgiveness. The reality of being alive though is that many people will 100% hurt you for their personal gain.
> That's a worse crime than selling someone a drug that might kill them
I am pretty sure the 14 people who died weren't smuggling in 14 doses of fentanyl, is killing someone a worse crime than selling 100,000 people a drug that might kill them, and will guaranteed fuck up their lives, their families lives, and their community?
The USA (and many countries) decided long ago to allow the sale of alcohol, a drug that ends many lives and ruins many, many more. I hope that once these fentanyl smugglers are dealt with, we can do something about the drug sellers that are operating out in the open with impunity.
Then why do we have courts and law and due process?
Or you think only US persons are deserving of such?
Its almost certainly cocaine
The US has literal videos. "Grasping for straws" is what this is called.
> People who have lost someone (either through death or just throwing their life away) to drugs will tell you these "poor fishermen" are murderers
Just to be clear-- we're talking about a hypothetical family member of a potential future victim of drug overdose who was unwittingly saved based on fully trusting the federal government's claim that their extra-judicial killing stopped the international trade of illicit drugs as opposed to killing innocent fishermen.
Did I correctly label all the global mutable state in your example?
I get and agree with your non-sequitur that there's a clear difference between drug mules and fishermen, I just don't see the relevance of that to the danger of leveraging these post-9/11 counterterrorism laws (and secret interpretations of them) to carry out extra-judicial killings.
Edit: to be extra clear-- the whole point of meaningful democratic oversight in this case is to be able to meaningfully care, measure and review the difference between drug mules and fishermen. The entire modern history of secret interpretations of counterterrorism laws tells us that without this basic oversight, the government will always claim they only target the murderers. Worse, they'll use the veil of national security to hide the fact that innocent victims are jailed, tortured, and killed through the same counterterrorism programs.
This is not a useful conversation because there is no way to know that any drugs have been destroyed. The issue at hand is that the government is blowing up unidentified boats full of unidentified people. Talking about the harmful effects of drugs is a complete non-sequitur until there is some convincing reason to believe that drugs are involved.
The intelligence used for the strikes are not shared with you. Your assumption here is that these strikes are baseless, but you don't know this.
There's no way to know, because no attempt was made at interdiction.
If these are really narco-terrorists, then some evidence should be released justifying their execution on the high seas.
Some evidence has been shared with the public, and the administration has lied about it.
> The boats get hit and you see that fentanyl all over the ocean, it’s like floating in bags, it’s all over the place.
- https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/15/trump-venezuela-car...
Here are the videos he's referring to, let me know if you see any bags of fentanyl: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1151367989097..., https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1152335554451..., https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1153737518118..., https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1153966324414...
Beyond this administration, the US government has a documented history of lying about the justification for military action. When people are being killed it is irresponsible to assume, with no evidence, that they are telling the truth this time.
I am not assuming the strikes are baseless, I am stating that there is no evidence for any basis, so discussing if they might be justified if some hypothetical evidence existed is pointless.
Last video is literally a semi-submarine. Do you think they were on a marine fauna tour?
We've actually had multiple high profile intelligence leaks by the current admin because it's full of absolute idiots, and the leaks would indicate that they're about as smart as your average user on Twitter. Frankly if anyone believes their strikes have any sort of valid basis with all the leaks that have gone out then I would question their critical thinking ability.
You're kind of talking to yourself as well.
Just trust me bro
Would you accept other countries blowing up Americans because some Americans bring drugs and other things into other countries?
Yeah... If you are smuggling large amounts of fentanyl or weapons into another country and they shoot you that seems pretty ok.
> If you are smuggling large amounts of fentanyl or weapons into another country and they shoot you that seems pretty ok.
Assumes facts not in evidence.
Also, there's great reasons to have punishments for crimes that are not just summary executions. Even if you have a warped morality where all criminals of any sort should die, there's _still_ great reasons to not allow that to be chosen by the closest person with a gun. That way lies chaos and corruption.
Did you read the post I was replying to?
So if China CLAIMS without evidence that Americans smuggle large amounts of fentanyl or weapons on international water then you are OK with them killing Americans? Would it include your family if it was claimed they are smugglers?
If other countries were bombing US boats in the Gulf of Mexico, closer to the US and hundreds or thousands of miles away from the country doing the bombing, would you be okay with that?
Why limit it to boats? Maybe he would support shooting down American civilian planes if claimed they had drugs on board. I’m sure he would support that.
The normal thing that every country does is to interdict, board, and inspect. That's how it has been for hundreds of years of maritime law.
How do you know that already doesn’t happen? Not necessarily blowing up but I’m sure there’s a gulf of dead people with US citizenship who have been killed by various states for participating in drug activities and illegal activity at large.
And you support the killing of Americans? You think it is legal to kill Americans if you claim they had drugs on them.
Try smuggling a smartphone to north korea and see what happens
If I’m on a boat a thousand miles from North Korea and I’ve got a smartphone in my pocket, should I be blown to pieces?
You wanna look up what China does in south sea
what china does matters how?
You think Americans are killed on international water by North Korea and that US says it is legal to kill americans?
Singapore has given many foreigners the death penalty for drug smuggling and I couldnt care less actually
If youre implying the people being killed are innocent countrymen of the real criminals then of course I object. Everything I have said applies to people actually comitting crimes
"Penalty" is the key word here. Like, issued by a judge, after proper judgement according to the law of the land. Not random shooting people without any due process.
This will definitely get lost in the conversation but like I said right up front, I dont actually agree with killing them. It seems that we ought to be able to intercept these boats and process them as suspects of a crime. It just rubs me the wrong way how every issue gets written up as a one-sided narrative of good vs evil depending on who you support politically.
The issue here is we have zero evidence any actual crimes were being committed - because we blew up the evidence from afar before we even saw it.
Seems rather incompatible with a justice system, and hard to distinguish from random military action.
After their day in court. We are talking about killing Americans without evidence and without due process.
I'd argue a missing social safety net combined with grossly inadequate public education, no job opportunities, unaffordable healthcare and housing, and a prison system designed to punish all drive people to take drugs. Drug addiction is just the symptom. Let's focus on giving people real hope and value and meaning in their lives, from birth to death, instead of killing people, without trial, a world away.
> Im not actually in support of killing these people but I have to say, people seem to gloss over that each boatload of these drugs literally destroys multiple American families.
So does alcohol. (And a whole bunch of other domestically-produced stuff.)
How much effort is being put into the demand-side of the equation?
> people seem to gloss over that each boatload of these drugs literally destroys multiple American families
They also gloss over the fact that alcohol does the same. But I don't think it's bizarre to allow people to make their own decisions.
When alcohol was criminalized, many people would go blind from impurities in their own homebrews. Legalization and regulation are good things to prevent some of the unintended consequences, like deaths from adulteration with fentanyl, hotspots, and so on.
These boats aren't even headed to the United States.
Not anymore they're not.
Many (possibly all) of the boats in question were not capable of making it to the U.S. from where they were hit without refueling multiple times. It is not possible that they were headed directly to the U.S..
>> Many (possibly all) of the boats in question were not capable of making it to the U.S.
Now none of them are.
If your barometer is 'thing destroying American families' does this mean you'd also be willing to excuse blowing up health insurers or does your logic only apply to things that aren't directly under the thumb of American businesses?
The pragmatic approach is that we're spending far too much money blowing up small boats which could be better invested in actually fixing our healthcare system and other domestic issues, with decent odds of going to war and spending even more money because of it. The empathetic side is that these are just fishermen that aren't even involved in this whole shitshow getting killed for political points by a bloodthirsty and stupid admin.
Even if you just assume guilt it doesn't make sense. You send the coast guard to capture the boat and then you have a person with knowledge and drugs and a boat which can be traced & used as evidence...
I actually agree that we ought to be using due process aswell, but I dont like the "these are innocent fisherman" narrative
You mean the casual sense of "innocence", but they are literally innocent in they they've not been convicted of the crime they were killed for allegedly committing.
fair
"The only real drug problem is scoring real good drugs. Haven't we learned our lesson? The corner store sells finer scotch. But who's got uncut powder?" - NOFX
If you kill yourself with drugs, nobody murdered you. That's a stupid way to approach things.
Wage theft destroys families. Gambling apps destroy families. Can we just blow up the owners of major corporation?
Why are you making the assumption that they are poverty stricken fishermen. That kind of boat and engines is not something a poor fisherman would use or own.
What makes you assume they own the boat?
Doesn't seem like this survivor has much money.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/22/americas/caribbean-strike-sur...
>Seems like we're bombing a bunch of low level, poverty stricken fisherman who occasionally bring a load of drugs from point A to point B.
If I understand things correctly, no one's denying that this is what they're doing. Furthermore, not only are they denying it, in many people's minds, this is justification. I'm sure that many carjackers had awful childhoods, but when one has a gun to your head you're not really in a mood to pray that no one hurts him.
My conspiracy theory is that the administration recognizes the current media climate (a flood of frantic but ephemeral media/social media coverage of everything he does) and are leveraging it to combat things like immigration and drug-smuggling down.
The ICE deportation shit seemed nuts at first. Sure deport undocumented immigrants, but have some compassion and sympathy. Things like deporting a mom and dad at their kids birthday party seemed psychotic and bad for everyone.
Then I read that 80% of the deportations are a result immigrants turning themselves in out of fear. Whether intentional or not the most effective thing ICE did was creating a media frenzy that resulted in people turning themselves in out of fear. Ironically the people trying to "hold ICE accountable" by blowing them up on social media have caused way more deportations than ICE themselves.
Maybe this is the same thing? If all of a sudden a few smugglers getting blown up goes viral the next fisherman who wants to make some extra money might take a pass.
The alternative is Trump is just crazy and evil and power hungry (could be easily true based on his past), but I tend to get suspicious whenever we attribute a humans motivations to: "yeah they are crazy/evil/bad" because people are much more nuanced.
Also I know I am gonna get downvoted to oblivion lol
I wonder if they're trying to setup a precedent to start deploying the military in force on US soil to fight "narco-terrorists"... "We'll we can't kill them all in the boats, so obviously we need military strike forces deployed in all major American cities and tanks on the boarder with Mexico"
They did it in Panama against Noriega in 1989.
One wonders what kinds of domestic abuse such legal hacking enables as side-effect as well: "Sorry Ma'am, your husband was killed in that traffic stop, but you know, the officers were not actually targeting him, just his car..."
The US already has the "confiscate and sue the money" legal loophole process for robbing people at random, without heaving to charge the people with anything. Yay civil forfeiture.
Civil forfeiture taken to a new level?
"We're suing the money and confiscating it, we're not suing you." -> "We're bombing drugs, not people."
Collateral damage be damned!
Here’s hoping Congress wakes up and passes laws that curbs presidential power.
There already are laws! They’re not being enforced (enforcement is an Executive Branch function...).
The remedy for the Executive Branch breaking and/or not enforcing laws made by the Legislative Branch is supposed to be impeachment by congress.
true and teh Supreme Court having been packed by trump admin #1 and an incompetent democratic leadership or rather Sith-lord 5D chess playing Mitch mcconell blocking appointments to the court ... isn't helping protect the rule of law much at all.
That was my wishful hope in 2016, today I can't imagine it happening without a very different Congress.
Midterms are next year. Think about who you want in Congress and vote appropriately.
That will only work if Democrats can obtain a veto-proof supermajority in both houses. Good luck with that.
The problem right now is that the Executive Branch is refusing to carry out the existing will of Congress. Passing more bills (that will be vetoed) to tell the executive to do its job isn't all that helpful.
At this point I think only the courts can save us, but I don't think we can rely on SCOTUS to do the right thing. And even if they did, they have no real teeth to force Trump to do anything.
I carefully think we are better off with Democrats controlling both (or at least one) houses of Congress, but that won't magically fix things.
You can at least remove the pursestrings from the executive by changing Congress from the rubber-stamp it currently is.
Maybe, but Trump is already violating plenty of Constitutional and statutory "pursestrings", and so far Republicans have been quite complicit in the process. Even with a reduced presence, they are likely to keep ~34 senate seats [0][1] which is enough to continue protecting him from justice.
How would/should our system recover if a President commits all sorts of crimes with the support of 34 senators?
(Bonus fun fact: The theoretical minimum popular support needed for 34 senators would be 3.6% of the population.)
Between the Epstein stuff and the economy, if it starts to look like Trump is going down Republicans in Congress will start bailing like rats leaving a sinking ship. They may be amoral, but they aren't stupid.
Eventually, but the last 10 years are the story of me constantly overestimating them, so I think we should err on the side of pessimism.
Heck, if would be very difficult to craft any factual account of political events these days that Me-of-2005 wouldn't dismiss as mad ramblings.
Congress has all the power they need, they simply refuse to use it.
You’re welcome to move to the EU. Everything is a committee. Nobody is ever responsible. Nothing ever gets done.
As here, saying the Islamic State was a criminal organization may have been true, but once they were declared to be organized armed groups participating in an non-international armed conflict, they were subject to lawful killing. Should they give clear indication that they have placed themselves hors de combat (surrendered), they are subject to life imprisonment. Though it'd probably be safer to set their own boat on fire and jump off before heading out to sea.
You can make up any story you want about the actual reason these people are in the boats, where they're going, or if they are or are not committing crimes (even intermittently). None of those stories are true. At the end of the day, we are murdering people without due process. Full stop.
Due to the sheer number of outright lies and bad faith arguments the courts really ought to order an independent council to review all administration opinions and briefs.
Am I the only one who thinks that this will effectively enable vigilantism? What is stopping this from trickling downwards to lower levels of government and law enforcement? And then, of course, it trickles down to the citizenry because of the actions of that government.